X Marks the Spot
Hubble Telescope Research Trials and Tribulations
Colin Cox
Johns Hopkins University
About the Lecture
The Hubble Space Telescope has become better known for its flawed mirror than for its scientific results. Although the mirror imperfection has affected much of the scientific program, the telescope remains capable of producing sharper astronomical images than are available from any other observatory.
This talk will address the mirror problem, what has been done to compensate for it by means of image processing, and the improvements that are to be installed during a December 1993 shuttle mission.
Some recent telescope images and their interpretations will be presented.
About the Speaker
Colin Cox received a doctorate in Physics from Oxford University. He has since worked in the fields of high energy particle physics, medical physics and imaging, and development of astronomical detectors. He is currently at the Space Telescope Science Institute, managing a group which maintains the telescope’s pointing and calibration data bases and working on applications of photon counting detectors to stellar interferometry.